


The Candle

by Hikou



Series: Spiral [6]
Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Drug Use, F/M, Self-Insert, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-10-30 03:09:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10867803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hikou/pseuds/Hikou
Summary: Cloud rejoins Shinra. OCs abound. Self-insert-tastic.





	1. The Candle

**Author's Note:**

> In which Cloud and Hikou meet in Cosmo Canyon and get totally inebriated.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Cloud and Hikou meet in Cosmo Canyon and get totally inebriated.

There’s a strange sense of weightlessness that will wash over you with the sound of that flute. It’s hard to fight because it calls in time with the whistle of the wind. The drums pound in a pulse that keeps my heart moving. I am retiring with the sinking sun, behind the rocky, red cliff sides of the canyon. I am bleeding deep purple like the sky; the soothing trill of the music has charmed the sorrow and loathing from my body like a serpent.

Maybe the air is just too thin up here.

The air is thinner in Cosmo Canyon and the heady feeling I’m trying to distinguish from the music is either the altitude, the strange native peyote blowing downwind from the elders, or both. Because it certainly can’t be grief.

Indeed not.

There are a great many people gathered at the Candle tonight. Young tourists and students huddle together in excited awe, beholding the peacefulness of the people and the beauty of the Planet around them. The sky twinkles fondly in shooting stars and red glowing planets, but shines cold down upon us. I try to disengage myself from their wonder, but the magic is hard to shake in a place like this.

I’ve been here too often to be disused to the natives setting up their hammocks and crude pillows. There is only the observatory in Cosmo Canyon, no houses. The people of this land slumber in the safety of their compatriots under the protection of the great Candle and the beauty of the open sky. Here they smile and rock, share and drink, sing and love. It is exotic in a nomadic way and serenely unattainable.

It will be enough tonight that they invite us into their pocket of comfort and acceptance.

I sit on the far side of the bonfire they’re named the Cosmo Candle, filled with the drink they’ve named the Cosmo Candle, and sniff curiously at the pipe filled with something else they’ve named the Cosmo Candle. I don’t begrudge the elders their strange version of spiritualism, and take my turn with the courtesy owed of a guest and the recklessness of a widow.

And it is in that instant I finally feel the thin thread connecting me to the other side of the fire. Perhaps my sixth sense is just delayed. The Turk in me has been numbed just at the very top layer of my brain—the one that knows when someone is looking at you.

I can’t be certain, but it seems as though he’s been staring for quite some time. Ice blue mako eyes widen as the circle completes its way to him and I am startled that he accepts the smoldering offering they present with little more than a stifled cough. His eyes leave mine for only a moment.

The stare is uncommunicative and hollow from both ends. The elders spin their tales and the young people whisper and point at the stars in a lethargic tranquility.

The Candle will burn all night; legend has it that it has never gone out.

But it seems we will gaze much longer. The flames dance between us long after the last howling warrior has burrowed himself into the grip of sleep.

“Are you following me?” he finally asks. The question seems loaded, but his tone is not accusatory.

I look down to check; I must confirm that my navy blue has been replaced with the sheer and draping fabrics of the Canyon. I look like an imitation native or an overzealous tourist—a dirty hippy. “No.”

The fire of the Candle crackles timelessly between us. He doesn’t believe me, I know, but the Cosmo Candle—and I’m not sure which one—has impaired his faculties. His face remains blank and his doubt slumbers as the camp around us.

He’s leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees, but his forearm sways with the tiny bit of effort it takes to point through the flames. “Then why are you here.”

“Mourning,” I admit. I try to brush my hair back and my fingers graze the feathers dangling from my ear. They’re soft and swaying, but they feel out of place for my persona. Hikou would not admit such things, but Hikou also would not have risen to skirt the Candle, tiptoeing around dozing bodies to compose herself much too close to the blue eyed figure at the other end.

The leather feels strange against my skin. Out of place in the Canyon, and I brush his sleeve aside to rest my bare shoulder against his.

I don’t look at him, but I can feel the bewilderment seeping from his skin.

“This was the only place I ever saw her happy,” he admits.

I don’t pretend I don’t know who he’s talking about. And although I've never met the pure-hearted half-ancient, I’m mildly offended on behalf of my long dead savior. I must believe in my heart of hearts that she loved another, a man who passed in a fury of horror and bravery. But the blonde man's sadness weighs on me in a familiar fashion. I have been a footnote as well and am accustomed to his feelings. 

“She’s happy now,” is all I can offer. 

“I’m not,” he admits, eyes turning away from the righteous indignation in mine and towards the flames.

I feel pain for him, but I’m not sure why. Perhaps it is only my own emotion, leaking onto his already downturned face. My brain instructs to cheer him, to point out his more than adequate woman, not-quite-his beaming two children, and his peaceful occupation.

But Cloud Strife is a wolf, and wolves to not crave adequacies or responsibilities. They crave struggle, and exhilaration, and survival. He looks at me with the pale eyes of an animal caged, and I want to weep for him, but I don’t.

The Cosmo Candle holds my face unchanging, mute as my voice in the flickering darkness, and I am not sure if it is the flame, the drink, or the smoke either. My finger smears into the soot soaking the red clay rocks and he lets me reach towards him and hold his firm jaw in my hand.

I drag my fingers from the edges of his blonde hair down the bridge of his nose. I trace gently over his lips down to the point of his chin. I make one clean swoop under each eye. War paint.

“They only burn certain woods on the Candle,” I explain to the Hero. He watches me patiently, his eyes shining brighter against the black streaks. “They say the trees are sacred and the ashes will guide those worthy to their truest calling.”

To be honest, I’ve tried it a few times and it hasn’t worked yet. But the lore rings in my head in a dead man’s voice, and it is difficult to ignore.

 “I’m not meant for anything greater,” the young man tells me forlornly. “I have accomplished everything I was supposed to.”

It has a ring of truth, but his words slur. He’s blitzed out of his goddamned mind.

I smile and stand. “You aren’t dead yet,” I proclaim, more trying to convince myself than him. “Let’s go have a spirit quest or whatever the fuck these wackjobs do, Cloud.” My hand extends to him, but he does not take it.

Perhaps things like this are meant to be done alone.

He returns his gaze to the fire and I release my arms to drop sadly at my side.

“She isn’t here,” I proclaim. _I am,_ remains unspoken. “Let them be happy,” I implore—for both our sakes. “Let them go.”

His brow is knit, but it’s always knit. His mouth is downturned, but it’s always downturned. His shoulders slump, but they always slump. He is weary and worn. This star is old and dying.

I lean forward and press my lips to his temple, in a lucid but sincere display. My heart bleeds, but I will not implode with him.

I turn to leave, tumbling from the rock table of the Candle in one skittering jump. A hand pulls firmly at my bicep, willing me not to fall.

I spin to a darkened face, not sure how he was able to so gracefully follow me. 

“Will you help me?” he asks.

“No,” I reply truthfully.

He crosses his thumbs from my brows to lips anyway, a smear of something smoky smelling streaking behind. The hands skate down to rest on my shoulders and finally clasp my hands. He leans forward for a moment, forehead smashed against mine. I’m not sure if he’s trying to regain his balance or psychically communicate.

A deep breath pulls in through his nose. “All right,” he announces and turns towards the staircase descending into the darkness of the earth. “Let’s go.”

And so I follow Cloud Strife into the desert.  

The Skeeskee’s fireworks explode in the desert below like heat lightening or fireworks. I can’t decide which. Cloud and I are propped up against each other on the edge of a cliff I’m used to slipping off of. 

“I love you,” he tells me in the tone of a drunk. 

And I laugh, partly in humor and partly in pleasure. 

“You’ve seen everything I’ve seen,” he tells me and there is a weight in his voice that conveys the gravity of all he has seen, “but you shrug and push onward.” He pauses for a swaying moment before crashing his temple into my own. “Like an ox,” he finally concludes. 

I fall backwards in defeat. He falls backwards in bliss. Our feet dangle over the abyss—a fall that would lead to certain death. 

“You’re nothing alike, but your response is always the same,” he explains. “It reminds me of her.” 

“Aeris,” I correct.

His head rolls to the side on the stones and he looks at me strangely. I gather it has been a long while since anyone has spoken her name out loud. Perhaps this is the only reason he tolerates me. 

“Tifa is a good woman,” I start, but he waves me off and rolls away. 

His back is broad and the leather straps that stretch taught across it only emphasis the size of the man. I want to grab at them and yank him around like a marionette, but this is not appropriate in the Canyon. In the Canyon, life respects life, and Turks and SOLDIERs are suspended. 

I spread my fingers against the large cross in the leather instead. 

He shivers. 

The energy between us electric, amplified by the stars and the moon and the Canyon air. We are made of mako and lifestream this night and for some reason that is all that matters as I slide my hand up to rest on his neck. My fingers can curl with the power to tear steel, but instead they only lightly pull back the stray hairs that rest here. Someone is a good man as well, but I don’t find myself caring. 

My body has a need to constantly stay in motion, and although my brain and I can’t pinpoint which direction is accurate we wobble towards him all the same. “I care for her,” he admits. “She’s my responsibility. So are Denzel and Marlene.” 

“And the world,” I add fondly, twirling a piece of his hair between my fingers. 

The sky was bleeding into purple again, staining the black sky indigo around the edges. It wouldn’t be long before the sun invaded. I pretended I was too busy watching it, letting it bleed me of my sorrow again, but his silence disturbed me. I did love him too, in a strange way. 

Perhaps it was only respect. 

“Shinra has been my home,” I explained to him. “We protect our own and we live because we’re dying.” 

A sigh met me, expanding through his chest and outward through his leather clad back. My hand retracted down to grip his shoulders tightly, my forehead burying into the back of his hair. “We will always make room for you.” He smelled like sweat and sand and that strange Candle smoke. “I’ll always find you a place,” I promised penitently. But when he rolled back towards me, there was only the crash of our lips rising against each other like a tidal wave, the soot so carefully etched on our faces smearing into one strange Rorcharch test. 

My responsibility would be somewhere alone and disappointed as well, but I couldn’t calm the urge as I clung to him in the sand. “Can you help me?” I asked him between panting breaths. The words so subtly different, but generally the same. 

“No,” he replied, for probably the first time in his life. “But I’ll come.” 

I accept him all the same. 


	2. The Cliffside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hikou combats a hangover and channels a dead woman.

The sun is searing somewhere in the east. The air quivers in fear of the sheer force of the heat. The intricate and soft sky of the night time Canyon had been transformed into one, fearsome and unforgiving ball of fire.

We remained safe. The clay wedged between my fingertips still felt cool against the air. A slimming puddle of shadow stretched out from the rocky outcrop we had braced against, but the sun was moving swiftly noon-ward.

My caftan was missing; my shoulders were bare, and I shrugged uncomfortably at them. The draping, sheer dress of the locals was less of a fashion statement and more of an armor against the brutal rays of the Canyon sun. My fingers still brushed the fabric, though.

I looked downward, to find series of shawls crafted into some sort of bizarre sarong, wrapped loosely around the hips of a reclining blonde man. I wrinkled my nose, feeling shameful at the invasion of his privacy. It was less offending to see his uncovered body than to notice him so _uncoiled._ Cloud Strife was a bundle of nerves and back up plans. His casual banter was calculated and his endearing expressions had been learned from a dead man.

Under the surface, this was a man who craved greatness but feared all. Every small victory he had one amplified to me at that realization, as every one had hinged on that monumental struggle.

Maybe the Candle(s) were taking longer to wear off than usual.

Maybe this was only perverse because I couldn’t stop staring at the broad shape of his body or the thin material of the sarong.

Either way, I thought, twisting to sweep a wide gaze at the empty sand around us (devoid of any black leather clothes), this definitely looked like drunk Hikou’s handiwork.

The sly bitch.

I shifted my weight from foot to foot thoughtfully. The wind howled through the Canyon, screeching an uninvited opinion. The scraping angels in the sand where we had lain told a strangely forensic tale of the night before. Enough of the shuttering snippets of memories were left to piece the tale together pretty evenly.

I struggled to feel ashamed, but couldn’t bring myself back down to the level of empathy. I had transcended to an animal brain that was satiated and preening.

I would feel guilty outside of the Canyon. Here it was simply a display of affection.

I was sobering up enough to smell the hippie bullshit on that one, but the thought cleared the tightness from my chest all the same.

I bent down next to his figure and pushed my hand to his face one last time, enjoying the look of him with the severity absent on his face. The sunlight had crept up to his ankles now and I shook lightly, reveling in the intimacy of my fingers wrapped around his bare shoulder.

When he awakes it is not with alarm, though the harshness readjust his features into the normal furrowed setting. He takes a moment to assess his head, and the sand, and his new garb, and my lack thereof. Some feeling passes in his eyes, but I don’t have time to nail it down as regret.

There is a visible effort as he closes his eyes and tries to regain _himself_ , but again comes up only with Zack.

He stands and the loose knot of the fabric sags low, but he reaches a hand to the back of his neck in a parody of sheepishness. He wants to say something to me, but he’s not sure how. “I… uh…” he starts

Zack would have wanted to know, “So you’re my woman now, huh?”

So I answer Zack instead, “The Canyon’s the Canyon; everywhere else is everywhere else.”

The conclusion calms one of the nerves, but it still isn’t what he wants to know.

The red rock of the surrounding cliffs stretches around us so high that when I look up I believe I might climb to Heaven. Birds swoop and soar through narrow passages. Trotting wild dogs slumber on ledges below, poking out of shady cave dens. The Planet itself calls in the wind and for only a moment I can hear it, filled with great sadness and such great joy in the same moment.

I spread my arms and let the wind whip against my hair. I can hear the shuffle of sand as he realigns his position somewhere behind me. I turn to meet the cocky, cross-armed posture of a SOLDIER, First Class.

But Cloud Strife was never SOLDIER, First Class.

I smile as I lower my outstretched arms to rest my hands on his shoulders. I am happy in this instance, as this person. I don’t need to be a Killer, or a Comrade, or even Employee 8246471. None of those names matter.

“I wish I knew you, Cloud,” I whisper earnestly, too quietly to hear, but it carries on the wind, “I’d love to actually meet you _._ ”

His breathing deepens, a tactic he’s learned over time. He glances at the clawing handprints in the ground beneath his bare feet. “We’ve met.”

“No,” I frown, “I want to meet… _you.”_

The look on his face is pained in its surprise, but I must admit that it is uniquely _his own_. 

 


	3. The Cactus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Cloud finds a cactus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It isn't Cactuar...

The Canyon is my home away from home. The pastel skies and painted rocks had ceased to be postcards and had instead become a road map. It was a private place in that none were brave enough to follow me this far. It was a crowded place in that one never found oneself entirely alone.

The people of the town bustled about, eager to speak and eager to hear, devoid of personal interest as their world swelled of each other. The visitors were passed with an excited sagely eye: more had come to teach.

The rocky valley teamed with the wildlife the natural mako in the area had bred. It was all spiky and fierce, breathing furious flames or ducking behind armored shells.

The wild dogs here gazed with strangely cat-like eyes behind pointed teeth and snubbed noses. They leapt amongst cliff surfaces like mountain lines. They gathered in packs like wolves.

The birds flew on the clouds of the storms, raining down lightening with the flapping of their wings. They screeched loudly and arrogantly, the only ones free to soar between the craggy passes of the Canyon.

There were sights to see, and suns to fall, and stone that breathed with life.

They didn’t exactly handout the sheikh getup on the first stay.

But no matter how I tried or how many callings I listened for, no absolution had ever come. The serenity of the Canyon always soothed my bleeding heart, but it continued to bleed all the same.

So, although I knew where we were going, I let him lead. The cloth trailing from his waist swept away his footprints as he walked, but I managed to keep my way.

He turned, as he did every so often, to shade his eyes and make certain I was still following. I stare at the new soot marks painting his chest, the ones scraped in claw marks that match my ribs. We’ve tactfully not mentioned them aloud and I wonder idly if either of us actually recalls how they came to be.

“Why are you here?” he asks me again once he turns around.

“Mourning,” I reply for consistency.

He doesn’t seem calmed by the repetition and bucks suspiciously at everything that surrounds him.

“I was here once with a man,” the story began. “He died shortly after,” it ended just as quickly.

I’ve moved to walk beside him and must hold myself from taking the lead. He takes notice as the wind takes hold of what dress he’s left me. It’s a reminder I’m moving too quickly.

“Did you kill him?” he wants to know in a voice supremely devoid of judgement.

I look up into his inquisitive eyes, startled. I am unprepared for this amount of empathy and it occurs to me for the first time that Cloud Strife has killed not only monsters, but men as well.

“In a manner,” I decide.

Like most things in life, he is dissatisfied with this. A hint of trepidation remains in his tone, aware bounds are being overstepped, but we are in a feral world that is lacking certain social taboos. “Then who did?”

I take a minute to consider the question for the first time. “Life,” is the best culprit I can name.

He considers my answer for a very long moment with obvious distaste. He stops alongside a cliff; the slim craggy opening to a cave lies only a few meters beyond. “It’s better than death, I guess,” he finally decides and drops down to his knees.

The muscles of his back ripple in a hypnotizing way, and I am too lost in the effort of deciphering who he _really_ means to be concerned with what he’s actually doing. He rises quickly to his feet, and I struggle to suppress a jump at the motion.

His arm is outstretched to me. At the end his hand is caked in dirt and tiny streaks of blood that is too vividly red. A handful of green pulp drips between his cupped fingers.

I look down to see the shell of what was once a cactus on the sandy ground.

He pushes his hand closer towards me, insistent. “We’re dehydrated.”

He’s a survivalist; I chuckle to myself, continuing to glance between his hand and the spiny skin.

He grabs my wrist with his free hand and slaps the pulp into my palm before turning away with an irritated sigh. He busies himself trying to hollow the rest of the plant for himself.

I mean, they don’t even give you the hair feathers until your third time.

“What is it?” he finally wants to know, looking up at me from where he’s still crouched, hands full of green goop.

“Nothing,” I smile and smash the sustenance he’s so thoughtfully found for us against my tongue. It’s his walkabout, anyway.

My grin freezes at its zenith as I watch him chew the fleshy fibers with a thoughtful look. He smiles back at me, encouraged, a spot of cactus sticking in his front teeth. He’s trying to figure out if it tastes like chicken—no fucking idea what he just put in his face.

I’m a terrible spirit guide.

His eyes are widening at about the same rate his pupils are dilating and he abruptly wants to know, “Why did you join the Turks?”

I don’t know what my pupils look like, but I knew better than to rock the boat in the middle of the darkest part of the Canyon.

“To kill Rufus,” I admit without feeling and turn to walk into the abyss of the cave ahead of us.

It doesn’t matter if he follows. These things are sometimes meant to be done alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...so it's still vegetarian?


	4. The Cavern

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which shit begins to go down.

The shadows adjust to my eyes long before my eyes adjust to the shadows.

Darkness swirls and beasts become piles of rubble and stalagmites become pointed fangs. The world shifts between strange dreams and blurry realities with a speed that matches my rapidly beating heart. My pupils struggle to force the right amount of focus for this low light, but are instead ripped wide by the green goo rapidly absorbing into my stomach lining.

This was the holy side effect of the sacred cactus. It got you high as balls.

And Cloud, with the luck of the sad sort of idiot he was, had pulled it straight out of thin air in the goddamn desert.

I had never been able to quite find the trick to it. I still hadn’t, I realized, as I watched the rocks around me breathe with a swelling swaying that matched my own chest. No talking penguin had ever marched its way out of the canyons to explain life to me. Only loathing and depth waited for me in these well-marketed hallucinations.

But the elders persisted and so I had continued to try.

The cave had been a terrible choice for this awful lesson I kept continuing to fail, but the safety of the darkness in the wake of the blonde man’s confused expression had appeared comforting. I could not afford self-doubt now. I had to be in control. I had to master the situation.

My face would always give me away in the light of day. I suppose this is why I worked at night.

My clothing was too sparse and too thin for the chill of the cave. I had been outfitted for the worst of the sun, not the inside of the earth, and the cool, hollow breezes knotted the muscles of my neck. I was seeded with the apprehension someone was behind me. When the rising and falling of the walls was blackened in one terrible eclipse, I couldn’t suppress the yelp from my mouth.

I slapped a hand there too late to keep it in, but left my palm pressed there in shame. This was not the way I had been trained to act. This was unacceptable.

Somebody really was going to ghost my ass out here in the desert one day.

But the outline of the breathing rocks glows in a comfortable neon shade of life that mimics the inside of my eyelids and so I continue to breathe as well for now. The men-shaped monsters hulk in and out of corners in forms too familiar to recognize. They follow the sway of the rocks, everything flowing onward in an alluring fashion. A hand is waving to me to continue, but it is alien, ragged, and neatly clawed.

The sunlight returns in sporadic spurts, flickering in a disorienting way between the shadows of limbs. Cloud Strife is walking very slowly through the entrance. He’s decided to attend this adventure. The consideration he has discarded no longer blots out the sun.

He knows something is wrong, but he’s not sure what. The right side of his face looks like he wants to ask for help, but he’s too afraid to. I wonder if the left side agrees, but its cast in shadow.

The glow of the rocks fades in the shroud of heat and wind that bursts in with the sun. My left arm feels hot and burnt and my face remains a schooled reflection of haughtiness, in control of this situation; my right hand reaches out for his in the safety of the darkness. It is cold there, but his closeness feels better. The world is eerie and untested, but it pulls firmly at the hold it’s made in the center of my chest.

I have to turn my face inward, towards the cave when I say it; “Let’s go inside.”

He turns towards me and while my expression is illuminated in the sun, his is now totally shadowed. The glow of the cave reflects in his blue eyes and the shine is sharp and exciting like the spark in a live wire. “Inside where?”

“I have no idea,” I tell him and bare my fear and timidity in the light of the unforgiving sun. Chill wraps around me from behind and I can feel the arms of the cave pull me backwards. I _will_ go. “Please come,” I pose the beg as an invitation.

Our arms outstretch, bound at our clasped hands, as I descend and he totters on the border of the surface world. I slow as the tension increases. The imprint of the sunlight in my eyelids is painting that glow on the breathing gravel beneath me. It’s pulling me onward and downward.

He steps forward at the last moment; it is the second before our fingers untwine. He shades his eyes with his spare hand, peering down at my feet. My eyes are well enough to see his own sense of apprehension and _familiarity_ rise to the surface of his features.

Perhaps there is something down here for Cloud Strife as well.

I study him studying the ground, the glowing now ebbing from blues to greens in time with the settled breathing.

“My God,” I realize, “you see it too.”

"She's down here," he says as plainly as his own name. 


	5. Courses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which running away seems like a noble thing.

It totters excitedly from limb to limb, rocking with the enthusiasm of a child in a candy shop. It pulls its front two arms inward and limb-jointed to flail like a malformed t-rex. Its jaw quivers in a strange, boneless twitch of salivation. Three sickly yellow eyes jolt in a strangely hypnotic motion between my crouched form and the Hero swaying upright somewhere to my left.

The Stinger is fluid and comically fast. Each shuffle of its legs rolled like a parodied summersault. It hops forward testing a timid jab before jostling backwards in nervous apprehension.

Cloud stands before it. Shoulders set back and bare chest puffed out like an ape. He rocks back and forth drunkenly as his eyes try to correctly capture the situation. They’re stalling long enough to let his brain figure out what he should do.

His right hand grasps backwards over his left shoulder but finds only more flesh and no steel. His left wrist rotates outwards, revealing a naked hand and no bangle. His fingers stretch and bend, testing his confusion. They slap across the top of his tangled blonde hair and it takes me a long moment to realize he is looking for a heavy helmet that I’ve been straining to feel the weight of—the protection of a Shinra beta mask.

The realization that mine is missing spikes a panic deep in my heart. I cover my mouth to hide the shock and accompanying shame.

But Cloud stands firmly.

The glow of the cave illuminates him softly. It shimmers off of the thick, silky webs stretched across the passage, and it overpowers the eerie manufactured mako glow, rendering the man’s eyes a human shade of blue. His hands remain clenched at his sides, devoid of sword or master materia, standing beside no compatriots or coworkers. He is alone with just himself. He has only the mind and the body he’s been born with. There’s no one here to claim him. There’s no one here to save.

He sways—I begin to notice, creeping carefully along the sidewall—in a fluid rhythm with the tapping legs of the Stinger.

He’s waiting to close his jaws like a crocodile, I realize.

The wall behind me gives way to nothingness. Another cavern, darker than the first, is arching backwards over my right shoulder. The Stinger is no longer interested in me. All three of its bloodthirsty eyes are focused on this dangerous dance it had engaged in.

Cloud’s eyes were more subdued. They were observant, but only half engaged. He did not have the eagerness to fight that Zack did. He did not jump heroically forward to lay down his life for mine. He danced because dancing was what he was good at and there was nowhere to go for him but forward.

Only this small demon lay before him, and surely he would conquer that. Cloud would move forward, around this ugly beast alone as Cloud.

Because if he could not, then he was not Cloud.

I am still not sure if anything remotely close had ever crossed his mind, but this is what I decided as the world swayed around his motion. This was a private affair, and so I knew I had to leave.

I descended backwards slowly, knowing with certainty that every step I took backwards would lead me further into the past. Away from this fantastical trial that was about to occur.

But it was not my trial.

The window of light shrinks ahead of me. I am forced to crouch to keep the pair in my vision. The ceiling waivers above me and I am left with the sense that it is descending the further I bend.

The hole stays widened long enough for me to see Cloud’s legs finally lurch forward. There is an audible snap and a shrieking, tongue-less screech before a large shaft of green, the thickness of old bamboo dropped through the tunnel entrance.

The strong legs wrapped in my caftan continued to charge forwards; I dropped my gaze between my thumbs and continued to move backwards.

**Author's Note:**

> This is totally what I would do with my vacation time.


End file.
